The Ukrainian embassy in Prague expressed outrage by this development and demanded that the publishing house bring the map of Ukraine contained in the atlas 'in line with international law.'
"Drawing the map of Ukraine without including the territory of Crimea contradicts international law and completely ignores the stance of the European Union," the Ukrainian ambassador to the Czech Republic wrote in a letter addressed to the publishing house.
Meanwhile, the publishers said that the incident was caused by a mistake by one of their cartographers.
"Our cartographer was also working on a treatise on the history of Ukraine while making the atlas, and he accidentally used a map from a different historical period," Ottovo nakladatelství replied, pointing out that the atlas features a somewhat similar mistake regarding Northern Cyprus.
The publishing house however didn’t elaborate on exactly which map the cartographer used.
In March 2014 the Crimean parliament declared independence from Ukraine and hastened to reunify the peninsula with the Russian Federation following a referendum in which more than 96 percent of residents voted to rejoin with Russia. Crimean residents made their decision after the Maidan protests culminated in the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine in February 2014.
